Teaching Tools

Environmental Ethics

Aligned to national standards of education and California standards of education for grades 9-12, the Environmental Ethics Curriculum includes a video series and written curriculum filled with activities and suggestions for community projects to help students think more critically about the environment. The curriculum provides students with contextual scientific understanding while challenging them to form ethical opinions about how to manage our most important environmental resources.

Each copy of the curriculum includes:

The video series Environmental Ethics: Examining Your Connection to the Environment and Your Community, developed by the Goldman Environmental Prize. A 64-minute video series featuring environmental heroes from around the world (both VHS and DVD versions included)

Comprehensive Teachers’ Guide and Student Workbook aligned to national standards of education

The curriculum is geared specifically toward middle and high school students, but may be adapted to fit the needs of all teachers.

Climate Change

Produced by WPSU (a PBS affiliate) and the Rock Ethics Institute, this short film reviews the current state of scientific understanding about the human influences on climate change through straightforward explanations by top geological, meteorological, and geographic scientists working on climate related research at The Pennsylvania State University. The film concludes with the argument that while the science has reached a high degree of certainty and there is little remaining disagreement about the causes of climate change, there remain questions as to what to do about climate change which are fundamentally ethical in nature and are now the responsibility of decision-makers and the public-at-large. The film features professors Richard Alley, Katherine Freeman, Michael Mann, James Kasting, Petra Tschakert, Klaus Keller, and Nancy Tuana.

Class Material: Corresponding to each of the scientists’ discussions is an NSF Ethics in Environmental Education Module. There are five modules in all. Each contains a complete set of reading materials, lecture notes, and PowerPoint slides.

"Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?" —Henry David Thoreau